pimples around my mouth - why?

The pimples around my mouth have been coming back. Naturally, I would think this has to do with my GI tract. That may not necessarily be true. Sometimes I think I have to have patience? I know that it's internal and that anything external I do to my face has very little effect. I have blackheads & whiteheads. I stopped washing my face with soap because it only dried out my face & didn't help. The rest of my face is soft & improving, but I keep breaking out around my mouth. I have the occasional "bromide pustule" (I take Lugol's iodine), but those don't hurt, don't come to a whitehead, and seem to be in different places, like below my earlobes and along my jaw & under it. Sometimes those aren't even very pink.

My Acne didn't really start until I was on the birth control pill in my 20s. In a sense, it's like it hasn't entirely gone away since then. It used to be much, much worse, but it has always concentrated around my mouth, below my mouth, from the corners down onto my chin. There's got to be a liver connection, a hormone connection. Maybe it's slowly working itself out and I'm just whining because I want it to go away, totally, like PRONTO.

I oil pull once every morning. I eat a diet free of processed foods. I take cod liver oil. I take B12. Sometimes I take magnesium, zinc, selenium, vitamin C. I have very few grains in my diet, and I am entirely gluten free for a few months now. I drink lots of water every day. I dry brush my skin, rub my fingertips over my scalp vigorously morning & night, massage my face with clean hands, exfoliate my face with baking soda occasionally. I get monthly vigorous massages from a massage therapist. The rest of my skin is pretty awesome. It's just this extremely pimply area...and then sometimes, the pimples go away, but I have a good amount of scarring there (very small scars). I do get an occasional pimple on my temple, or in the creases around my nose (tiny whiteheads), or on my upper back (but those may be bromide detox). My chest, which used to be pretty pimply before I cut the wheat/gluten out of my diet, has no pimples anymore.

I am a 31 year old woman, no children.

Thoughts? Tweet